In 1931 Edward Frederic (E. F.) Benson published Mapp and Lucia. This was the fourth of six novels in which he told the story of Elizabeth Mapp and Emmeline “Lucia” Lucas as they went about their upper middle-class lives amidst the genteel ambience of 1920s Southern England. In three earlier novels Benson had chronicled the separate fortunes of these two ladies as they imposed their benevolent dictatorships on two sleepy villages. Mapp was the embodiment of provincial etiquette in the coastal resort of Tilling, whilst Lucia wafted through the Cotswolds backwater Riseholme, bestowing her poised artistic sensibility on her numerous acolytes. It was clear that each woman, in her own way, was an almost irresistible force to be reckoned with, so that when Benson took the decision to have them encroach upon each other’s tenacious sense of propriety by having them inhabit the same community, sparks would inevitably fly.
By the early 1930s E. F. Benson had made his reputation as a prolific middle-brow author with a sizeable back catalogue including novels, short stories, histories and biographies. Although much of his output is now largely forgotten, his cachet within the annals of twentieth-century English literature is based firmly on the continued popularity of the Mapp and Lucia novels. Born in 1867 to a future Archbishop of Canterbury, Benson had an unimpeachable pedigree as a scion of one of England’s best-connected families. His siblings all proved culturally talented in their own ways (his elder brother A. C. Benson wrote the lyrics for Land of Hope and Glory) whilst their mother, Mary Benson, appeared to be the epitome of the refined Victorian wife. However, as subsequent studies of the family have shown — most recently A Very Queer Family Indeed: Sex, Religion, and the Bensons in Victorian Britain by Simon Goldhill (2016) — the truth was somewhat different. It was, perhaps, the tension between Benson’s veneer of guarded respectability in public during his formative years and closeted homosexuality that infused his prose with impishly wry ambiguity, particularly when describing his characters’ foibles. His protagonists are not mere ciphers helping to propel the plot, but intriguing personalities in their own right. The engaging eccentricities of all concerned were expertly brought to the small screen in 1985 by London Weekend Television (LWT) over a series of ten episodes in which Prunella Scales as Mapp and Geraldine McEwan as Lucia were wonderfully supported by the likes of Nigel Hawthorne, Dennis Lill, and Mary MacLeod. Despite later re-workings on TV and radio, this LWT production remains, for me, the definitive exercise in capturing the vital spirit of Benson’s creation on screen.
By the time Elizabeth Mapp and Emmeline Lucas finally went up against each other in Mapp and Lucia, devotees of Benson’s earlier accounts of their separate exploits would have been well versed in the particular idiosyncrasies of each. Mapp’s compulsive quest to obtain an encyclopaedic knowledge of her neighbours’ private affairs reveals her as an inveterate busybody, ready to employ devious methods in order to achieve her objective. Holding this secret knowledge supports her self-appointed role as Tilling’s moral arbiter. However, its population is insufficiently cowed, and much of the comedy in the Mapp stories derives from her less-than-successful efforts to rule the roost, combined with bathetic attempts to maintain her dignity. As one of Benson’s biographers put it, “in her iron determination to work out what everyone is up to [Mapp] is a sort of manic and trivialised Miss Marple.” Lucia, on the other hand, might initially appear to transcend the petty intrigues of village life, immersed as she is in the eternal verities of cultural splendour. On a daily basis this normally takes the form of endlessly practising the first movement of Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata — the following two movements being “vulgar and uninspired” or, truth be told, too difficult for her to play — as well as flaunting her (questionable) familiarity with Italian by repeating the same phrases at any opportunity with “the farthest away expression ever seen on mortal face.” Although Lucia’s collection of pretensions might seem to the outsider to be nothing but silly poses, woe betide anyone who might smirk at them or otherwise question her serene gravitas. Both Mapp and Lucia defend their self-constructed personas with a latent fierceness which often erupts into outright vindictiveness: these two ostensibly quaint eccentrics can, in fact, be just plain horrid if the occasion so requires.
Benson first brought his two antagonists together in a storyline which saw Lucia renting Mallards, Mapp’s house in Tilling, for a few months in the summer. Lucia brings along her dear friend Georgie Pillson, who often rivals the two main characters for comedic value. Georgie is a refined bachelor who clusters around Lucia as her second-in-command, whilst discreetly aware of his soulmate’s foibles. He rents the nearby Mallards Cottage which he proceeds to adorn with his embroidery and “bibelots” (or quaint and curious trinkets). Georgie is fastidious about his appearance down to the smallest detail, including the carefully coiffured hairpiece that he puts on every morning and fondly imagines to be convincing. He and Lucia play piano parts together, having covertly rehearsed them separately beforehand in order to impress each other, occasionally babble away together in baby-talk, and relish a good gossip. Before long the trouble starts as Lucia makes headway in winning the hearts and minds of Tilling’s inhabitants, much to the teeth-grinding annoyance of Mapp whose allies they formerly were (or so she liked to think): Lucia’s “showy little dinners and odious flatteries” have mesmerised the shallow villagers. Lucia’s other affronts include putting a chain on the front door of Mallards to prevent Mapp from just breezing into the house, her habit in the early stages of Lucia’s residency there. However, Lucia’s newly-established status as a cultural beacon for her new friends very nearly comes a cropper when one of them, Mr Wyse, announces that his sister the Contessa Faraglione is due to visit Tilling, to converse in Italian with her, a crisis that Lucia only just averts. The novel culminates around a struggle for possession of Lucia’s recipe for Lobster á la Riseholme, an apparently minor plot point that Benson develops into a spectacularly bizarre and comical denouement involving a storm flood.
When the next novel (Lucia’s Progress, 1935) opens, the two rivals are back in Tilling after a series of offstage adventures together. Mapp has married Major Benjy Flint, on whom she has had designs for some time despite his notorious whisky addiction. Flint is an old colonial soak, fond of exclaiming ‘Quai-hai!’ in Hindustani when his tumbler is empty —much to Mapp’s disapproval, as she attempts to tame his tippling. Meanwhile, Georgie Pilson has contracted shingles and grown a well-manicured beard to disguise it, which he thinks makes him look like The Laughing Cavalier. Lucia takes an amateur interest in speculating on the stock market, while Mapp and Lucia vie for a vacant seat on the Town Council. There is also a curious and somewhat shocking storyline involving Mapp’s claim to be pregnant by Major Flint, while by the end of the book Lucia and Georgie have made their platonic union official, and Lucia’s ambition is rewarded with the office of Mayor.
With Trouble for Lucia (1939), the novel sequence finally comes to an end. As Mayor of Tilling Lucia now has the dilemma of whom to nominate as her Mayoress. (Benson had some experience of the duties involved in her position, having himself been elected Mayor of Rye in East Sussex in 1934, a town that he used as a model for Tilling and in which he distinguished himself, according to the Rye website, by treating all the townspeople with “compassion and understanding.”) Despite the predictable rush from her female satellites, Lucia finally decides to award the office to Mrs Mapp-Flint, because that way she can keep more of an eye on her. Their new, socially prestigious positions do not quite calm the natural inclinations of either lady: Lucia learns to cycle but ends up being fined for dangerous driving, and Mapp discovers that there is no such thing as bad publicity when ‘Quaint Irene,” an artist who clomps around Tilling with a pipe in her mouth and a sardonic eye fixed on her fellow villagers, produces a caricature portrait of the Mapp-Flints that is chosen as Picture of the Year by the Royal Academy. Although Mapp dislikes Quaint Irene’s “dismal directness” of manner and is initially horrified by the painting, she eventually basks in the plaudits that it brings. Lucia’s fortunes and standing then take an unexpected dip when an old nemesis from Riseholme, opera singer Olga Bracely, appears on the Tilling scene to lure Georgie away from her…
As the author of some seventy-six books, the first published in 1893 and the last in 1940, along with an extensive portfolio of other literary works, Benson could appear to have been one of those mesmerisingly prolific second-division writers of the early twentieth century for whom authorship was more of an artisanal occupation than an artistic vocation. Even so, he remains an eminently engaging author —particularly of his own memoirs. However, the accepted opinion is that the Mapp and Lucia books are his finest legacy. There is just the right mix of gossipy intrigue, colourfully idiosyncratic characterisation, and ill-concealed malice, all delivered with Benson’s gift for sardonic humour, to make these novels worth returning to again and again.--Mark Jones
